A History of Hairstyles

When catching up with members of my family that I don’t often see, one of the remarks that I hear frequently is “Your hair is different every time I see you!”, which is hilarious and true. Ever since cutting my hair into a pixie 5 years ago, I’ve dyed my hair every colour under the sun, including platinum blush with pink streaks, and platinum blonde with pastel lilac highlights. I thought it would be fun to do a history of all my hairstyles, because who doesn’t love looking back in time and cringing at their poor hair choices?

1989 – 2005

It all started when I was 2 years old with hair as white as snow. Also, shaggeriffic bowl cuts. Don’t those eyes just stare right into your soul? It’s like they’re saying “One day, you will pay the big bucks to have your hair this colour again.”

Then I survived through the late 80’s and early 90’s when my mom did my hair – hello side pony, frilly bangs, scrunchies and headbands. Once I was able to decide for myself, I settled on long, straight and blonde all the way until grade 12 with one deviation to a chunky strawberry blond bob with bangs clipped to the sides of my face using hair clips. There was also a junior high phase with slicked back ponytails and over plucked eyebrows, but the proof is buried deep 😉

2005 – 2012

Then college happened, and I moved out and started dating Nathan, who introduced me to his hairdresser Kirsten. Over time, I stopped being so precious about my hair and started being more daring with my hairstyle choices. First I cut it just to my collar bones, then to just below my chin. I started playing with shades of blonde, until Kirsten asked me to be a hair model. For the hair show, I went lilac, which was my first foray into the world of pastels! I then flip-flopped between platinum and more natural shades of blonde, and continued cutting it shorter until it was a fun and sassy pixie, which has stuck around!

Nathan and I got engaged at the end of 2011, and I decided to grow my hair out for the wedding, which was the longest 9 month hair-growing process of my life. Growing out a pixie sucks, and includes multiple versions of a less than desirable mullet. It was all worth it when I got to rock a Grace Kelly inspired romantic bob on our wedding day. I still love how it looked!

2012 – 2015

Literally 3 days after the wedding, I cut all my hair off into a pixie again. Then came the chameleon era. I tried straight forward blunt bangs and hated it, razored sides with longer bits on top and loved it, and then back to platinum with a variety of highlight colours – purple, pink, teal, then orange. Most of them went in really saturated and then faded to beautiful pastels, which I loved. Then I went brown. Then I decided I wanted to grow it out again (silly me). And so began the mullet growing phases again. I got bored with the lack of colour, so I went super dark purple with the intention of having it fade to a lovely grey-lilac, which was probably one of my favourite colours that I’ve ever had.

I had finally grown it out into a short little bob, but again, I wanted some fun colour. Then came the breaking point, literally. My hair had finally had enough, and one platinum lilac dye job later in the summer of 2014, it started breaking off about an inch away from my scalp. Cue the heartbroken and frantic tears. I never thought I was precious about my hair, but when it starts falling off in clumps and you can’t do anything to stop it, you realize how attached you are pretty quickly.

Then there was the emergency haircut that tried to save my longer hair without cutting all of it off again, which ended up being an asymmetrical one-side-short, other-side-long kind of deal, but my hair was still falling out and I was stressed out about it. I ended up cutting it all off again in December of 2014 and returning back to the pixie, and I swore off all hair colour until my natural hair had a chance to grow in again and all the damaged parts were repaired and grown back in, which ended up being in May 2015.

After that I wanted to try a gentle, non-permanent colour in my hair, and I ended up going for a light auburn that faded to a nice strawberry blonde over time. I continued with that colour until I got my hair done this week, and now it’s a VIBRANT red, which I can’t believe I’ve never tried before because I love it so incredibly much. I think red is going to stick around for a while 🙂